Ashtik: The Champion of Black

          There is a sound nature hates most. It’s men, clothed in steel, marching in the rain. It's the beating of war drums in a peaceful village. It’s the sound of needless death, and nature would suffer this day.  

Her men had worked well, as had the women Vamet had managed to recruit. They erected shoulder high walls around the Elder’s home. They dug tunnels from within and spread them around the village. They worked as a community on the brink, as the best of humanity.  

She knew the best wouldn’t be enough. 

“Ash,” the little voice whispered, breaking her trance. She turned to look at her. Evara stood so small. She had removed her armour and donned a thick smithing apron and gloves. An emerald stain slashed across the apron like the stroke of a brush, or blade. “It’s done.”  
“Good,” Ash darkly replied. She could see the smith and her father by the gate house, spreading the golden resin over the soaked wooden walls. Rain beat down hard, but it at least kept them cool as they worked. 

“Can...” Evara eked. Her voice failed betrayed her as she looked to the horizon, and the ravenous horde that blocked it out. 
“What?” Ash kindly pushed. She took her little sister’s face into her hands and forced her gaze from the killers, to her. 
“Can we win?” Evara choked. 
“I don’t think so,” Ash warmly admitted. “But I think we can survive.”  
Her smile wasn’t quite forced, but it was hard to keep.  
“Go back to the Elder’s home,” Ash ordered. It flipped Evara in an instant, and her eyes set to anger. 
“No,” Evara said with little left on her fuse. She didn’t quite stamp her feet, but she did look unusually petulant beneath the rain.  
“Go back to the Elder’s home,” She slowly repeated, much more severely this time. 
“But...” 
“Go back to the Elder’s home,” She quietly repeated a final time. It was enough, Evara gave in. She grunted and stormed away, back to their impromptu keep.  

“She’s a great shot,” Carolet whispered from beneath the alure. “We need her.” 
“They’re going to kill us, Caro. Her being a good shot won’t save her, but her being a good shot from behind those walls may.” She hopped down and met him beneath the wall. He was sharpening his steel in the only place covered from the rain. He oiled it and dabbed it in a foreign manner. A method he must have picked up on his journeys as a free rider.  
“It’s a waste of her abilities,” he insisted, though with little vigour. 
“You said the same of me, then you complained when I was given charge,” Ash grunted. She sat on an empty barrel beside him, and he passed her an apple from his pack. She thanked him with a nod and sliced into it with her dirk. 
“That posture will kill you when you get to my age," He laughed. She was sat with one leg dangled over the barrel and her cheek resting on the other. Her back was bent and arched like some raging feline. 
“I have many things to fear in the future, getting to your age is not one of them,” She laughed, though she did straighten out somewhat. They sat quietly for a moment while he oiled his halberd, and she crunched away at her apple. 

“I’m sorry,” He finally said. He placed his weapon aside and looked to her. It caught her by surprise, and she choked on a chunk of her apple. 
“F- for what?” She spluttered. 
“You are right,” he sniffed as he spoke. “I said you wasted your abilities, and then the Elder forced you to act upon your potential and I was petty.”  
“Oh, I-” She tried to say but he interrupted her.
“You have done more than I would have. Should Temujin have given me the command, we would have fought and died honourably. Under your command, many may yet live. I will not be amongst them,” his voice took a grim turn at that, but he wasn’t done, “I would have fought how I have always fought. The time-tested methods of honourable combat. You fight in a new way, in a necessary way. Remember that when you take your Championship, but also remember what comes next. I want you to watch them as they burn. I want you to remember the effects of your choices. The skin melting from young boys who fight only because they must. The pops as bubbles beneath the flesh burst. The heat of hellfire. Remember what you have inflicted, and what you have the potential to inflict upon this world. Then, I beg you, give a thought to honour. To the right way of war.” 

“I don’t want to fight wars, Caro,” Ash whispered. She tucked her knees into her chest and buried her face. “I don’t want to watch them burn. I just want to go home.”  

“I know, child, but this is the consequence of this kind of victory. If the Elder is correct – if you are the Champion – you will never go home again. I’m sorry.”

---

          She had no time to ponder him. A horn blew and a march began. The sun had set and the black night had rose. They marched without discipline, without order. They marched as a thousand when they were fewer than two-hundred. She wasted no words as she dashed atop of the wall. Her smith sons flanked her and a half dozen wives and daughters took up arms to her back. They had each a crude chest plate and helm. Simple beaten iron with leather straps. They must have been made in an hour each. She took a bow from Vamet and strung it at his side. “Carolet?” She whispered and the old man appeared at her side. 
“We hold until they are close.” He whispered to her. 
“Tell us what to do.” She said with complete determination. 

He bound a bow of his own and stood to the far side of the alure.  
“Friends!” He called. “We loose only when I give the order. We retreat only when Sai-Weleg gives the order. We surrender only in death. We die only when the day is won. Nock your bows, bolt your quarrellers and prepare yourselves. We do this together.”  

They drew arrows and held them to string. They racked back the crossbows and loaded bolts. They drew terminal breaths. They made final glances to their homes. They readied for death. 

The first wave didn’t even march. They sauntered along the water-logged fields as if on some beachside stroll. Twenty men, all armed and armoured in stolen valour, ready to pillage, and kill, and worse. 

“Draw!” Carolet called, and they did. It was a painful second before he called again. “Loose!”  
The arrows tore true, half even hit their targets.  
“Draw!” Caro called again. “Loose!” They repeated on and on, and the inexperienced quickly grew fatigued. They held war bows, meant for piercing steel, the draw proved too great for the farmhand’s young daughter. Then the gouty baker dropped his bow as he loosed an arrow. Next to fail was a pale and skinny woman. Her elbow bent inwards too far and the bow string tore up, and shredded the skin from, her forearm.  

The order came to fire at will, and the women who could, stood back and kept hailing arrows and bolts while the men took up steel and held the bandits from climbing the walls. The smith’s sons had true steel, blades and pikes meant for war; while the rest of them had tools and equipment. A pitchfork pierced a climbing marauder, and a sack of rocks collapsed another. Ash picked and jabbed with her spear at all who came too close while Caro used the short of his halberd to slash along the ladders that had been placed on the wall. 

“The full force approaches!” Carolet called. She saw the truth of it in an instant. They charged like ravenous beasts. They gnashed fangs of steel as the rain rolled from their brigandine flesh. 

The horn sounded again. Once, then twice then thrice. 
“Thrice for blood!” Carolet shouted. “This is our chance!” 

“Fall back!” Ash called over the clash of steel and iron. Her little band of unblooded levies fell at once from the wall, leaving only Carolet and Ash to hold back the tide. 
“Ashtik. Go!” Carolet ordered. A man in chainmail managed to get between them and Carolet sliced him near in half. He traded his halberd for a longsword discarded by a foul-smelling corpse. He carved his way closer to her as she danced along the alure. 
“Okay! Let’s go!” Ash called back once the others had made it back to the Elder’s home. 

Ash bound from the walls, rolling gently once she reached the ground. Caro was less graceful, pulling a bandit close and jumping down with the fresh corpse to act as his cushion. Ash slowed herself to his pace as the two made for the inner wall.  

“Fire!” She called as they got close. A dozen burning arrows tore the air apart as they charged with even greater ferocity than the bandits had. The wall caught, but not enough. The rain slowed the spread and barely a quarter of the wall had been afflicted. Men dove over by the dozen; all screaming out for blood. 

Dread and defeat had her, until she saw a little white beacon standing atop of the Elder’s hillock. 
“Burn,” she whispered much too quietly for Ash to hear. A bolt was sent from her crossbow. It wasn’t aflame but had some strange ceramic bulb at the end. It shattered against some man who stood before a wooden parapet. The ceramic shards sparked and sparkled like deathly silver starlets. Each ember landed upon the wood and stayed bright, and grew brighter, and brighter. The silver turned a brilliant blue, then a vibrant green. Then all was blue and green, and all was aflame. 

The walls burnt like a beacon, like a bonfire. Some sacrifice to some starved gods. 

Carolet was right about the effects. The crackling blaze was drowned out in an instant. All she heard was the screams. Men howling like wolves. The lucky begged the empty air for their lives, the rest begged for death. Some took the matter into their own hands, pulling molten daggers and slitting their own throats. One man tried to do the same, but the glowing steel stuck to his skin as he tried to drag it across his throat. Instead of slitting, it pulled and dragged the flesh from muscle. Then they had all screamed enough, and the flame buried itself in their lungs, choking their breath from within.
One got close to the wall, and Ash ended him before he could spread the fire. She was close enough to see his eyelashes burning and his eyes melt. She saw his teeth falling out as the gums around them boiled away. He screamed without air in his lungs with a sound like an accusation or damnation. He swore undying vengeance upon her specifically, despite having no eyes to see her, nor tongue to say as much.  

A man in the midst of it had the worst of it, by what she could see. His chest plate had melted inwards, and his helm had done much the same. Yet he lived. He ran, though his greaves had melted into the ground, straight off the alure. The helm boiled over his eyes and set his skin alight and the new air around him set a second flame from his flesh. He was writhing, and gagging, and dead. He was her victim, and her conquest.  

“Ashtik!” Miel called from within the walls. “Get inside!” She ordered. Caro stood behind the wall with as much flame in his eye as on the wall. He didn’t see her anymore. Just the crime and the criminal. She walked past him and inwards. 

“Snowy!” Tilak called. He forced her into a hug before checking her for wounds.  
“I’m unhurt, father,” She said from behind her haze. 
“No, you're not,” He shrieked. “Ev!” 
She appeared in as much of a daze as Ash was. She wobbled more so than walked. Each step seemed conscious. Each step seemed like the first she had ever taken.  
“Ev, we need you,” Tilak insisted. He poked and prodded over Ash’s various cuts and bruises. One took the full force of his mothering, a slash she had caught on her waist. It looked worse than it was, and it didn’t look particularly bad. The leather padding of her armour had held almost all of the damage. 

“You’re hurt?” Ev dreamily asked. 
“No,” Ash insisted. 
“Yes,” Tilak corrected. “Please, Ev. If you are well enough.”  
“Of course,” She answered. Evara moved closer to Ash and placed her little hands on her bloody wounds. 
“Stop!” Ash shouted. She took Evara’s shoulders into her hands and forced her gaze. Evara couldn’t meet her, she was half a dream. “Keep your energy, Ev. You’ll need it.”  

“But Ash-” Tilak tried to protest, but he was quickly snipped off by a dagger filled glare.  
“She’s not well, father,” Ash grunted. 
“I’m fine...” Ev breathily whispered, pushing her hands out again to heal. Her eyes couldn’t find purchase and drifted lazily across her sister. Ashtik took her hands into one of her own and dragged the child into a hug. 
“This isn’t on you,” She whispered. The words destroyed Evara. They ran through her shock and pulled her back into the dirt and rain. 
“They burnt,” she whimpered. “I said ‘burn’, and they burnt.” She collapsed into the hug and held tighter than her little form could possibly give her strength enough to. 
“It was my plan, my order. My burden. None of this is on you,” Ash whispered into her now silently weeping sister. 
“It was my flame. My fuel and my spark,” Ev said from Ash’s belly. “I said ‘burn’ Ash. I wanted this.” 

Words didn’t find her. Words wouldn’t be enough. The night had only just begun, what more sins could it drag from her? 

          “I’m sorry, Ev. I gave you no choice. All you did was protect us.”  
          “I saw them burn. I saw the seared flesh. Gods, I heard them die. I can still smell it. Burn meat. They rolled in puddles of rainwater but all that did was boil them. Ash, what have we done?” 
          “You’ve done nothing, Ev. I did what was necessary. They would have hurt you. I’ll kill them all before that happens, in ways much worse than this.” 

---

          Her mother took the child without a word and Ash sat the wall deep into the night. No bandits crossed the flame, though they tried many times to douse it. Not rain, nor dirt or any of their other plans managed to dampen the vast pyre. The smell persisted the whole night. Oak smoked steel and man. It filled the clearing; they could probably smell it over in Duke’s Crossing.  

“The stars have gone out,” Tilak whispered. 
“It’s the flame, it drowns out lesser lights,” Ash smiled. She joined his dumb gawking up at the stars, but few remained past the smoke, rain clouds and firelight. 
“Can’t even see heaven’s belt,” Tilak moaned. “But it’s still there, behind it all. Trust in that, at least.”  
          “Trust in what?” 
“Trust that despite the smoke and flame, clouds and chaos, the stars still shine. Even if we can’t see them anymore. They’re there, waiting to shine on us again.” He wrapped an arm around her. It was skinny, almost bone. She remembered what he had been like before. He could throw her across a room with a single hand. She could use his arm to do pull ups, now she couldn’t trust it to pick her teeth.  
“Is Evara sleeping?” She finally asked. He snorted a little, and she did the same, though she didn’t know why. 
          “Yes, she is. As should you be.” 
“I can’t sleep right now,” Ash groaned. She stepped down from the wall and the blacksmith took her watch. Tilak followed her atop of a hay mound and the two sat beneath the blackened stars. 

“Did they tell you?” Ash asked. 
          “Tell me what?”  
          “Why they gave me charge.” 
“I- hadn’t thought about it,” he laughed. “You suit the role well; it’s as if it was always yours.” 
“I’m a Champion, dad,” she said much too quickly. She tucked into her knees as he just laughed. 
“That you are, my little champion,” he teased. 
“No, as in a ‘Champion’ Champion,” she groaned burying her face in her knees. 
“Oh...” He simply uttered. She couldn’t see his slacked jaw or his widened eyes, but she could hear it in his hesitant breath. “The... Champion of what?” He slowly asked. Tilak sat up and shuffled closer to her. He placed a gentle hand to her shoulder as he asked. 

“I don’t know yet; but nothing kind if today is to be taken rightly.” Ash raised her head and presented the black steel gauntlet to her father. “This is what I wanted to show you. This is my mark.” The black abyss didn’t cower this time. It stood proudly on her damaged flesh. The blood seeping over it seemed to fall into the endless pit. 
“Oh...” He simply repeated. It could have been awe, or it could have been dread, but something took his words from him. “Oh, Snowy...” He muttered. It seemed a tear had found his eye and was soon to find the floor. “Look at me,” He said. She didn’t want to, not under candlelight. He looked so gaunt. So ill.  

“That’s a sparrow, Ash,” He said, meaning the formless mark. 
“It’s nothing? Just an abyss.” She looked deep into the swirling and shifting mark and saw no trace of bird nor wing. 
          “You are an unfulfilled Champion. You cannot see the mark until it understands you. Trust me, it’s a sparrow.”  
“So, what does a sparrow mean?” Ash asked. 
“A great many things,” he mysteriously said. “But sparrows carry dreams like ravens carry letters. It is time for you to be abed.” 

“But what does that mean?” She asked. Tilak rose to his feet and made away. 
          “Sleep, Ash. Hopefully the sparrows don’t fear the flame.” 

---

          She lay in that mound of pyre lit hay for some hours to come, though the sleep she had been ordered to denied her. She lay and closed her eyes for but a moment before she... died. Warm steel warmed her throat. Cold blood stained and sullied its beauty. 

Another blade made for Carolet, and he accepted it with glee. Then he didn’t look like Carolet anymore. He looked like a great blue giant. He bore a sword of light and slashed apart the enemy. Then he was dead beside her. 

It wasn’t a blade that made off next. It was the smith. He took his hammer and smashed Ash’s skull to dust. He cursed her and blamed her in words she was too dead to understand.  

The sky got larger, and the stars flicked off. A spider of a thousand legs stepped across the stars and landed within the bandit camp. It slaughtered the thousands of them, but it slaughtered some part of the no-more-child who bore it. 

The friend who was a foe came and did battle with the foe who was a friend. Red became blue; and gold became green. Grasses and magic turned to steel and hate. A world of war, a world burned to ash.  

She saw a stalwart. A lone vanguard. It was draped in darkness, though it battled for the light behind it. She saw the thousand stars and beings of good which owed their lives to the stalwart. They all stabbed it in the back, one at a time, though it never shifted from its post. It took its place and battled its own kind, the dark kind, for an eternity without relief or thanks. 

Then the sparrow came, and the dream broke.

---

          The night was still thick. The pyre still pillared. She had only slept for a short while, though it was more than enough for tonight. She didn’t jolt up. Her eyes peeled open and she lay there for a while. The hay was dry at least. It was alone in that. Her leather was slick to the touch and her hair was still soaked. She forced some great effort into standing and made for the Elder’s home. Within was warm and happy. The children slept in a great pile while the injured were tended to.  

“Sai-Weleg,” the smith’s eldest bowed. He wore a fresh scar across his face. It made him look older than he was, though he was still her junior. Everybody unsettled when he acknowledged her. They shot silent glances at her and whispered silent questions. The air was newly uneasy within.  

Ash didn’t know his name, so she nodded to him and awkwardly moved through the room. She came upon the Elder’s dressing room, and Miel standing outside the door. 
“Ashtik,” She whispered. Miel had her arms folded over her blue apron and blood-spattered dress. 
“Mother, you’re hurt?” Ash asked. She lifted the apron to get a view of the blood. 
“No, it’s not my blood,” Miel answered. “I was helping Ser Carolet with his wounds.” 
“Caro was wounded?” Ash asked in shock. 
          “Not terribly, but the Elder wanted it set properly before infection could grip.”  

“Is he inside?” Ash walked towards the dressing room door. 
“Yes, but he rests.” Miel said, blocking her from entering. Ash stepped back from the door with a creaking step.  
“I’m sorry,” Ash muttered. 
“I’m sure.” Miel said. “How many have you killed?” The question took Ash by surprise. The casual, almost conversational tone it was asked in forced her to think it over more than once. 
“I don’t know?” Ash admitted, shame dripping from her words. 
          “Not with the flame; with your spear. How many did you kill?”
“Five... Or six, I'm not sure. The first man this morning, and the rest in the battle.” 
“Did you enjoy it?” Miel asked. Ice seemed to fill the room; this was a conversation Miel had planned. She had expected to have it one day. 
          “What? No, of course not.”
          “But it made you feel powerful?”
“No!” Ash insisted. 
“Then what did you feel? Do you know they worship you now? They think you are a godensent hero. A grand Champion. The Sparrow knight they call you,” Miel said as if it was a vile accusation. “Do you like their worship?” 
“They won’t even look at me. They don’t worship me, mother, they hate me. They fear me.” Ash grew angry as her mother spoke. “I don’t need to feel worse about what has happened. What have you done? Did you fight? No, of course not.”  

          “How could they look at you? They think you are the Champion of Black. The harbinger of the apocalypse. Now answer me, Ashtik. How did it make you feel?”  

“I felt like I had a job to do!” Ash shouted, unrestrained by proximity. “I felt like they wanted to hurt Evara. I felt like I wanted to tear their hearts out through their mouths. They can worship me, or they can hate me. I don’t care. So long as Evara is alive, I will fight. I will kill. They will burn!” Her seething hatred boiled. It pushed Miel back, it made her afraid.  
“So Evara is your excuse?” Miel said, much quieter now. 
          “Evara is my cause. Evara is my purpose. I will bring the apocalypse if I have to. Anything to keep her safe. Thats something you wouldn’t understand, isn’t it? Love, undying and unebbing.”  
“You think I don’t love her?” Miel laughed in disgust. 
          “I think your daughter has just suffered the worst day of her life. I think she has just nearly died a dozen times over; and I think you are stood here, judging her from behind the walls she erected to keep you safe. I think you despise me because Evara thinks me a better mother.”  

Miel would have taken all of her insults and all of her pleas, but she wouldn’t take the truth. It struck a deep nerve and Ash knew it would. A hand flew through the air and landed with a heavy crack against Ash’s cheek. Miel stood there, too indignant for words, as tears welled in her eyes. 

“I carried you for nine months,” she whispered. 
“And you gave up soon after,” Ash interrupted. 
“You wouldn’t understand. Something changes in you after you have a child. I was empty. I tried my best, but it was different with you. Your brother was easy, love came easy. I tried with you; I swear it,” she sobbed. “It destroyed me every day. It got too much after you were no longer a babe, and nothing had changed. I was a monster, Ashtik.” Miel tore the sleeves from her dress. “It drove me to madness. You drove me to madness.” She showed the scar on her wrist. The mark deeper than the abyss Ash wore now. “I’d have tried again, I’d have succeeded, if it weren’t for Evara. When she came, Ashtik, it was like the first time. She was so perfect from the start. I didn’t hate myself every time I looked at her. She showed me I wasn’t a monster, incapable of a mother’s love. But you wouldn’t let me love her. The two of you were inseparable. I-”  

“Enough,” a dark voice called from behind them. Ash turned but couldn’t see him through the tears she didn’t realise had sprouted. Through the blur, he looked almost like he had in her memories. He seemed to stand a foot taller and thrice as broad. Tilak placed a hand on her reddened cheek, and the hunter looked down on his wife. “You dare speak to her like that, Miel.” 

“You knew how I felt, husband,” she spat through tears of her own. He didn’t cry. He looked at her as he looked at a rotten carcass. 
          “I knew there was animosity. I believed you jealous of her youth, or envious that she had Evara’s ear instead of you... But this? To tell your own daughter you never loved her but hours after she saves all of our lives? Miel this is cruel, monstrous. This isn’t you.” 

“How the fuck would you know?” Miel shouted. “We hadn’t truly met outside of the bed until this cancer caught you. I was alive before I was her mother. Now I'm just the monster who doesn’t love. You were no better, husband. You never cared for Damen. Ash was always the apple of your eye, why is this any different?” 

          “Because I loved my son. He was a warrior, not a hunter. So, I trained him to fight and saw him proudly off to war. We shared little, but I loved him. I love him.”   

“I tried! Gods know I tried to love her, but you cannot force yourself to love. Maybe the gods do know. Maybe they gave me this affliction, this... black depth within. Maybe the great Champion needed me to be like this. Maybe I was part of her plan.” Miel paused and nobody spoke. She dragged down breath after teary breath. “Or maybe I’m just broken,” she finally admitted. 

“You’re not broken, mother,” Ash breathily whispered. “You love Ev and she loves you. That's enough.” 
“And Evara wouldn’t love a monster.” Miel forced a laugh through her tears. 
“Yes... She would,” Ash corrected. Her eyes fell to her gauntlet, and her mind filled with purpose. The void took form, not quite a sparrow but closer to it. She saw a beak and a wing, a limb to fly and a mouth to sing. 
“I must speak with Carolet,” She said. The tears were gone and, in their place, was frightening determination. She lightly moved her mother aside and left them to their arguments.

---

          “Quite the ruckus for a man in his sickbed,” The old warrior mocked from his sleep. He didn’t raise his head and let his dreams keep their tenuous grasp over him. Ash ignored him for the moment. A basin of water sat at the far end of the room and a bronze looking glass sat above it.  

She worshiped the tepid water. It’s blessing purified the dirt and blood that still spattered across her face. She couldn’t recognise herself when she straightened out. This mirror must have been a portal, showing some other woman in some other place. It couldn’t be her. Ash didn’t look so hollow. The deep purple of Ash’s eyes lit every room aflame, the near black beads in this mirror couldn’t be hers. Her hair was nearly red as the fields of Sunrise. The pure white her father had named her for had been lost to war. Her red leather hunting garb had been sliced, torn and burnt in a hundred different spots. Where the armour had once had an exposed midriff, it now had a chainmail guard; one that may have saved her life earlier. Her dark skin seemed pale and red. Her cheeks seemed thinner than they should. Everything was off.  

“I don’t recognise myself most days, either,” Caro muttered, still half asleep. She had forgotten for a moment, in her reflection, why she had come here. 
“I need to do something,” Ash whispered. She couldn’t bear to look at him as he lay.  
“Something foolish?” Caro guessed. He shifted from his comfort to get a view of her. She could imagine what he saw standing over that basin. The monster that set his home alight. The putrid shard in her back and the deathly mark in her balled fist. The steel in her hand and the steel in her eyes. He must have seen a monster.  
“Foolish?” She grunted. “Probably. Sometimes it takes a fool.”  
“And sometimes it doesn’t,” Caro yawned. He sat up and came into her view. She looked into his eyes through the mirror. She realised that she hadn’t done so before. He was a comely man, even for his age. His deep brown eyes were still as youthful as her own, despite the hardships they must have borne witness to. His beard had been shaved back before the battle. She assumed he had done so to fit into his helm. He was as broad of cheekbone as he was of shoulder and not nearly as gaunt as others of his age.  

“Tell me, Ser Carolet. If you could give your life to stop this, would you?”  She asked. She still only looked at him through the bronze reflection. 
“What kind of question is that? Of course I would,” He answered almost indignantly.  
“Then what I do is not foolish,” She simply laughed. 
          “A noble sacrifice? Martyrdom? Thats the extent of your capacity?” 
          “If it’s all I'm needed for. Besides, my story doesn’t end here. Some foolish god has chosen me. They won’t let me die here, and they know I won’t have the will to fight on if the village is destroyed.” 
          “Be wary, Ashtik. I’ve known many men who said the gods were at their backs. All of them are dead. I promise you; your god doesn’t care if you live or die. They can always choose a new Champion.”  
          “Sure. But they’ve chosen me, and that must mean something.”  

Carolet laughed though it clearly pained him. He looked at her as she stood with her back turned. “It means nothing. You haven’t been claimed. You don’t even know to which goden or goddess you belong. You are unprepared and quite frankly, uninteresting. The gods will not bother to watch as you kill yourself.”  

          “Then I will force their attention. Pray for me, old man. Pray for me as you dream.”